In silver halide color photographic materials, the method of using light-sensitive silver halide emulsions and dye-forming couplers (also referred to simply as couplers hereinafter) which form dyes by reacting with oxidation products of aromatic primary amine developers is most frequently employed. As for the couplers, the combination of a yellow (dye-forming) coupler, a cyan coupler, and a magenta coupler is generally used.
Of such cuplers, 5-pyrazolone type couplers, which have frequently been employed as magenta couplers, still have serious problems to solve from the viewpoint of color reproduction. For example, azomethine dyes produced from the couplers of the above-described type have a side-absorption in the vicinity of 430 nm, exhibit a main absorption curve trailing a skirt of the long wavelength side, and so on.
With the intention of solving those problems, 1H-pyrazolo(1,5-b)(1,2,4)triazole type couplers have been developed as described in, for example, U.S. Patent Ser. No. 590,818 filed on Mar. 19, 1984. However, couplers of this type, although they solved the above-described problems of hue, have been found to have a problem in that the maximum color density of the developed image (written simply as Dmax hereinafter) is decreased because the rate of conversion from coupler into azomethine dye (referred to as "coloring efficiency" hereinafter) is low upon development-processing carried out under conditions that oxidation products of aromatic primary amine developers are generated in sufficient amounts in silver halide emulsion layers.